As is commonly appreciated, today's economy relies in significant part upon the prompt and accurate delivery of various forms of electronic messages from sponsors to their intended recipients. Electronic messages may include or utilize information pertaining to how to contact or communicate with a recipient, information for personally identifying an individual or individuals or characteristics of an individual or individuals, demographic information, psycho-graphic information, and other information. Electronic messaging is often provided in the form of e-mails, pages, and voice messages which are sent to a “mailbox” (i.e., an address provided on an electronic network) associated with a recipient. The mailbox is also commonly used by the recipient to send replies and other messages to such sponsors.
Additionally, since today's electronic marketplace is full of great volatility and mobility, electronic messaging service providers are often interchanged and substituted for by moving and/or temperamental recipients. Further, since recipients often receive messages from hundreds of individuals and sponsors on a weekly, if not daily basis, the volume of messages received often discourages a recipient from notifying the various sponsors of their new address when the recipient changes mailboxes/addresses. Additionally, due to the large volume of electronic messages a recipient commonly receives, it is nearly impossible for the recipient to notify all the sponsors from whom the recipient receives electronic messages of their new mailbox/address. Further compounding the tasks faced by sponsors and recipients with updating mailboxes/addresses is that, unlike the United States Postal Service where a recipient is usually associated with only one personal mailbox (i.e., their home mailbox/address), recipients of electronic messages often are associated with numerous mailboxes/addresses.
For example, a recipient fully integrated into today's electronic communities commonly is associated with a home e-mail address, a mobile telephone/voice messaging mailbox/address, a work related e-mail address, a personal/home voice messaging mailbox/address, a pager mailbox/address, a work related voice messaging mailbox/address, an instant messaging mailbox, a cable or satellite dish mailbox, and various other mailboxes/addresses through which the recipient receives information on specific topics. When such a recipient changes jobs and/or moves to a different city, numerous mailboxes/addresses may need updating. Since the recipient probably does not provide an identification of all the various mailboxes/addresses to all the sponsors from whom the recipient receives electronic messages, there is no single process or system available for letting recipients decide and automatically notify sponsors of changes to mailboxes/addresses.
Therefore, a system and process is needed that notifies sponsors when a recipient's mailbox/address has changed and to provide the location/address of the new mailbox. Further, since recipients often do not desire all sponsors or others to necessarily be informed of their new mailbox/address, a system is needed which allows a recipient to select which sponsors are allowed to receive the new mailbox/address information. Similarly, since sponsors generally consider their lists of recipients for electronic messaging to be trade secrets or otherwise worthy of protecting, such sponsors generally do not like to provide clearing houses, network message routing services, or others with such complete lists of their client base. Therefore, a system is needed that enables recipients to identify and notify sponsors when their mailbox/address has changed without requiring a provider of such service to actually access a sponsor's confidential or trade secret protected lists.